Tempest on tour: Christ and a bike

The Scottish Christian party's posters - which feature different passages from the New Testament and an enormous, daunting cross - are a useful way to brush up on your Bible study while on the campaign trail, notes Matthew Tempest.

Yesterday we tucked the Brompton bike in the back of the car for a trip to two key Labour-SNP battlegrounds in and around Cumbernauld. Today it is once again on the back seat as we head to the lovely, often overlooked south-west of Scotland.

This is Tory heartland - if a party that only holds 17 out of a possible 129 seats in Scotland can be said to have a heartland. Matthew Tempest in Scotland.Photograph: Martin Argles

As well as being extremely picturesque, it also has the proud record of containing the most marginal constituency in the country: Galloway and Upper Nithsdale, which Alex Fergusson won for the Scottish Tories by 99 votes back in 2003. The SNP are determined to win it back from him.

The leader of the Scottish Tories, Annabel Goldie, will be going on a walkabout in nearby Ayr with the shadow chancellor, George Osborne, this morning, while the SNP's Alex Salmond is commandeering a chopper to helicopter between three seats in the south west, including Stranraer.

Labour's Jack McConnell is in Stornoway, while Liberal Democrat leader Nicol Stephen is campaigning in Aberdeen with students, backing their demand for £168m more for higher education.

On the road yesterday it was impossible to avoid a novelty of this election - the Scottish Christian party. Their posters feature an enormous, daunting cross, plus a verse of scripture. The first one I saw had a very opaque message from the gospel of St Matthew, chapter seven, verse 16 (I think), about the confusion of fruits and the figs of desert. Or something. But in fact all the posters feature different passages from the New Testament - a useful way to brush up on your Bible study while on the campaign trail.

A final observation/prediction. I've been taken aback by the number of Green party posters in and around the central belt of Scotland thus far. So perhaps the party could end up meeting their promise of reaching double figures (they currently have seven MSPs) and playing a role in a coalition after all. More from the Greens next week.

A quick look at the tartan press: the Scotsman splashes on the fact that Scotland's nurses are missing out on a 2.5% pay rise promised before polling day but now delayed - "an embarrassing setback in Labour's attempts to win over health workers", the paper calls it.

The Record profiles what it calls Alex Salmond's "shadowy cabinet": the nationalist MSPs who would make up an executive if Mr Salmond became first minister.

"The barely visible politicians hidden by the one-man band that is the SNP leader," the paper calls them.

And the Herald leads on Labour's Jack McConnell warning of "tax upheaval" if a local income tax replaces the council tax.

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